New Tolkien Books:updates

"[QUOTE=Child of the 7th Age]Thanks, Davem.

I see from your link there is a second author and she is a librarian in the Bodleian archives so I am a little more inclined to buy this. (OK, I am biased here, but librarians generally know their collections better than anyone else, including profs and perhaps they did fiddle around in the archives.) US Amazon lists paper copies for about $20."

Actually it is unpublished lecture notes. Tolkien's notes from Oxford (and some from Leeds) are all contained in the Bodleian library. The authors have gone through these and pulled out things mainly relating to his literature lectures/unpublished editions and used them. The piece about the Rohirrim comes from his lectures in a box called A30/1 (?). Anyway it says 'No one would learn anything valid about the 'Anglo-Saxons' from any of my lore, not even that concerning the Rohirrim. I never intended that they should'. The authors argue that this explains Tolkien's reluctance to link the Rohirrim to the Anglo-Saxons - namely he was wearing his lecturer's hat and did not want people to think they could learn about that period of history.

Looking through the book there are lots of quotes from various A29s and A30s which I kind of guess are the boxes in the library.

F&H gets a mention in a chapter on 'The Fight at Balin's Tomb' where the texts presented are 'The Fight at Finnsburg' and something called 'Cynewulf and Cyneheard' (from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle).


Woz